62 - The Only Way to Know Love

The Only Way to Know Love; 1 John 3:16

1 John 3:16 ^NASB "We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."

The verse begins with a different word order in the Greek and the emphasis is on the words "By this we know love. The verb here is the perfect active indicative of ginwsko [ginwskw] which means to know something. The perfect tense depicts something different in Greek than it does in English: completed action, something that has happened in the past. And the emphasis is either on the fact that it is completed or are the present results of that past action. In this case the emphasis is on the continuing results of that past action, so that makes it intensive perfect. The emphasis that John is making is that we know something now as a result of what we learned in the past. It is a first person plural, which means that we have a subject, "we." The "we" here refers to the body of the apostles, not "we" believers. He is stating that "we, the apostles, came to know love by this." They came to understand what love is. It is an active voice because it is emphasising the fact that they, the apostles, had to learn this. They had to study, they had to think, they had to witness the life, ministry and crucifixion of Jesus Christ in order come to the point of learning something: what real love is. Love is expressed in the accusative case here, which means that it is the object of that knowledge. It is a very simple statement at the beginning: "By this we know love." The emphasis in the original is "By this," which draws our attention to the fact that there is only one way that you and I can come to understand what love is.

Mankind does not, cannot, and will not be able to know what love is experientially. The Scripture says that the only way we can know want love is, is to start with the cross. Whatever it was in life by the time we got serious about the Word of God we only had our own opinions. Now we have to go about the task of tearing everything down and starting over again because the starting point has to be the Word of God. So we have to overhaul our thinking and replace all of the human viewpoint concepts of love which have more to do with emotion and sentimentality and how we feel about somebody than with the divine viewpoint concepts of love which are based on knowledge, on thinking, and which completely eliminate emotion and sentimentality. This runs counter to everything that we have been taught and have picked up from our culture. Divine viewpoint love as taught in the Scripture is based on thinking, on character, on understanding what Christian integrity is all about as exemplified in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Therefore we have to recognise that the love we are talking about is a love that cannot be produced on our own, it can only be produced by God the Holy Spirit working in conjunction with the Word of God.

The phrase "By this" means that we need to put our attention, the spotlight, on the cross. Jesus Christ is the prototype, the model, the exemplar, the focus of what it means to love. If we want to talk about love we have to start at the cross and we have to completely understand everything that God did for us and the nature of the atonement.

As Christians we need to recognise the necessity for using the Scriptures as our starting point for every category of thinking in life, not just the so-called religious stuff. All areas of human thought are addressed by Scripture at some level. The Scripture at least provides a foundation and a framework and sets the boundaries for thought. This is why for the believer doctrine must be number one priority. Part of our job as believers is to take every thought captive for Jesus Christ. That doesn't just mean not to think impure thoughts, it means every thought. Whatever it is we are thinking about the Word of God is going to provide certain absolutes that provide a framework.

We have seen that love in the context of 1 John becomes a summary description of the character of the mature believer. The immature believer hasn't developed the capacity to love yet; he is in the process of just learning foundational doctrines of Scripture. This love is a product of the Holy Spirit; it is not something that we can manufacture on our own. It is the result of abiding in Christ, John 15 & Galatians 5:16-25. Love is connected to integrity, and the conclusion is that love apart from integrity is meaningless.

So John says, "By this [the focus on the cross] we know [have learned it in the past with the result that we continue knowing it] love…" Love is the object of the verb: "we know what love is." Then ^NKJV "because He laid down His life for us." The ^NASB says, "that He laid down…" In both cases it is a mistake to translate either "Because" or "that." In the Greek we have the particle hoti [o(ti]. Usually it means "because" but it is also used to set apart both direct and indirect quotations. It should be, "We know love by this: He laid down His life for us." That in a nutshell is how we know what love is. Apart from the work of Jesus Christ on the cross we don't know what love is. So this is expressing a universal principle here as to how the believer comes to know what love is.

"He laid down His life for us." The verb "laid down" is the aorist active indicative of the verb tithemi [tiqhmi] which means to set aside, to lay aside, to put something away or to give something up. It is the idea that He gave up, He laid aside His life for us. The word here for "life" is not the word zoe [zwh] which refers to the principle of life or the word bios [bioj] which has to do with the means or manner of life, but it is the word psuche [yuxh] for "soul" which often stands for life but is focusing on the immaterial aspect and not the physical aspect, reminding us once again that it is not the physical death of Jesus Christ on the cross that paid the penalty for our sins but it is His spiritual death on the cross. The reason for that is that the penalty for sin is spiritual death. The prepositional phrase "for us" is huper [u(per] plus the genitive case. huper is a preposition which literally means "over" but is used to indicate substitution—instead of, in place of: "He laid down His life in our place." So it is a substitutionary spiritual death. His judicial separation from God the Father on the cross is the complete and total payment of the sin penalty for every human being in human history. Therefore since sin was paid for completely at the cross the issue is no longer your sin, your failures, your disappointments, it is about Jesus Christ. The issue is whether or not you are willing to trust in Him alone, to accept His payment in your place. That is the gospel.

The doctrine of substitutionary atonement

1.  Man is a sinner. Every human being is born a sinner, spiritually dead and incapable of saving himself. Romans 3:23; Ephesians 2:1.

2.  God in His omniscience knows all the knowable. Therefore He is able to make provision for everything that occurs in human history. That means that in eternity past God could design a perfect, comprehensive, complete and sufficient plan for man's salvation.

3.  That plan involved all three members of the Trinity. It involves God the Father as the planner or architect of the plan. It involves God the Son as the one who carried out the plan. And it involves God the Holy Spirit as the one who reveals the plan.

4.  Jesus Christ is eternally God. There never was a time when Jesus Christ did not exist, and as such Jesus Christ possesses all the attributes of God. He possesses the perfect righteousness and integrity of God. That means He has the same love that God the Father has. Colossians 2:9; Philippians 2:5-8; John 1:1. He is also true humanity. He is not distorted fallen humanity, He was born without sin because of the virgin birth—no inherited sin nature, no imputation of Adam's original sin, no personal sin.

5.  As the eternal second person of the Trinity the pre-incarnate Jesus had perfect righteousness. That means He had perfect integrity which goes along with His eternal love.

6.  As the incarnate God-Man He is undiminished deity and true humanity united together in one person. He has perfect righteousness at His birth.

7.  Jesus Christ lived a sinless life which qualified Him to go to the cross. What under girds the act of love, His demonstration of love at the cross, is His integrity. Love to be love must be under girded by integrity and righteousness.

8.  At the cross the sinless or impeccable God-Man received the imputation of all human sin and bore our punishment. 2 Corinthians 5:21 ^NASB "He made Him who knew no sin {to be} sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him." This is what is called substitutionary atonement.

So John says: "We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us." That is the doctrine; the application is in the next sentence: "and we [also] ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." "We [also] ought" is a subjunctive mood verb which indicates potential; it indicates the possibility that we might not and that it is up to our volition whether or not we apply the principle. We may or may not lay down our lives for the brethren but we "ought to"—the verb opheilema [o)feilhma] which means obligation. So we have an obligation to apply the principle of this impersonal love, and that extends to sacrifice. That means we have to evaluate the kind of characteristics that are demonstrated by Jesus Christ on the cross. 

Romans 5:8 ^NASB "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died [as a substitute] for us."

1. It is initiated. God took the initiative in eternity past. He didn't wait for some kind of positive response on our part. Real love has nothing to do with the object of love.
2. It is aggressive, it doesn't sit back in the corner waiting for the other person to take action and do something. It asserts itself with confidence and boldness.
3. It is humble. That means its focus is not on personal glory, personal feelings; it seeks what is right from an absolute framework of what is best for the object of love. Jesus took on being a servant to do whatever was necessary. That included the incarnation, the sacrifice on the cross, receiving the undeserved imputation of human sin.
4. It is intense. The kind of love that God demonstrated is an intense love, a zealous determination to achieve its goal despite all obstacles.
5. It is steadfastly loyal. This is the concept of the Hebrew word chesed. It is loyal to an absolute. God is loyal to His promises to man and strongly desires that all men come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Therefore He does not reject or condemn man at the moment of sin.
6. It is a consecrated love. The word consecration" means to be set apart. In that Jesus Christ set Himself apart for the purpose of achieving salvation, of exhibiting His love for us. As such He is loyal.
7. It is dedicated. Jesus Christ dedicated or committed Himself to the task of going to the cross and serving mankind.
8. It is devoted. That is, giving or applying one's self entirely to a particular activity, cause or purpose.